HealthThe General health of the breed is good and with the purchase of
your Rat Terrier from a good breeder, you can expect a dog with
a long and care free life. The breed has become very popular in the past
few years. As a breed grows in popularly so do the problems, there is an
increase of new breeders, dogs in puppy mills, pet stores and people looking
to capitalize. An ongoing study of the breed has been made to chart what
disease/defects exist in the breed. Shown below are problems that have
occurred in the breed and a breakdown of the frequency of them showing
up in any particular size of Rat Terrier.***************************************************************.SurveyThe Health survey results below is based on a Rat Terrier populationof 338,919 dogs with 29,628 reported problemsThe survey shows that 8.7% of the total population shows at least one
of the below listed Diseases or Defects
.Top 5 Disease/Defects affecting
the Rat Terrier by Size.*Complete list of all disease/defects located further down on page.

Size

Disease /Defect - Number Effected

Toy

Demodectic Mange - 1 out of 38Hair Lip/Cleft Palette
- 1 out of 83Cryptorchidism-
1 out of 83Allergies to Vaccine & Medicine -
1 out of 91Skin Allergies -
1 out of 91

Mini

Airborne Allergies - 1 out of 63Umbilical Hernia - 1 out
of 71Color Mutant Alopecia
- 1 out of 71Soft Teeth - 1 out of 83Demodectic Mange - 1 out
of 91

Standard

Food Allergies - 1 out of 77
Hip Dysplasia - 1 out of 77
Patella Luxation - 1 out of 83
Entropion - 1 out of 83
Seizures/Fits/Epilepsy - 1 out of 91

Decker

Allergies-Insecticides - 1 out of 333
Hip Dysplasia - 1 out of 333
Food Allergies - 1 out of 500
Allergies - Contact- 1 out of 500
Monorchidism - 1 out of 500

Reported Problems and Percentage of Population Effected *This is an ongoing study and it is based on the problems reported
to date.

Column 1 shows the order seen for each problem. A ranking of 1 means
that it is seen most frequently of all the problems listed.
Column 2 lists the individual disease/defects reported.
Of all health problems reported; Column 3 shows the % that each disease/defect
contributes to those problems. Occurrences of any particular disease/defect
may be seen more or less frequently. The % attributed reflects a higher
or lower % of frequency of that particular disease/defect of the overall
problems.
Columns 4-7 show the percentage affected for each size and the frequency
of occurrence that one can expect.